by Fiona Gibson
Jonathan slaps skate wings onto plates and tips a bag of ready-washed lettuce into a dish. Until recently the salad would have included tempting accessories: blanched sugarsnap peas or toasted pine kernels. “If you don’t check the data,” he informs a colleague, “the whole bloody thing will fall over.”
He places his bleeper on the table so it can stare at us. Constance prods her salad and says, “What’s this in the lettuce?”
“It’s not lettuce,” I tell her. “It’s radicchio.”
“Actually,” Jonathan snaps, “it’s a kind of chicory.”
Constance shoots him a look as if he’s stamped on her toe and shunts the chicory leaves to the side of her plate.
Bleeper action continues throughout the night. By the time daylight seeps into the bedroom Jonathan has already left for work. Ben has spent a third of the night thrashing angrily, but now sleeps like a model baby advertising a mattress with sleep-inducing properties. Rather than wake him and battle with his ill humor, I am tempted to sneak back into bed, pretending I have forgotten about my appointment at Little Lovelies.
The taxi pulls up outside the premises a little after ten. The brisk poshness of Lovely’s voice led me to expect glamorous offices with floor-to-ceiling windows and people employed to smile and lounge on velvet sofas. But Britain’s Leading Child Model Agency appears to operate from a bow-fronted semi. Nothing distinguishes it from the other drooping properties in the road except a grubby blue-and-white sign bearing the words, in wedding-invitation script, “Little Lovelies.”
“Yes?” parps a voice through the intercom.
“I’m here to see Lovely. I have an appointment.”
The door opens and a squat woman stares at my chin. She has a bottle-tanned face and dimply cheeks. She looks like a tangerine. “Lovely’s on a call,” she says breezily. “Make yourself comfortable.”
She leaves me in a hall the size of a dining table on a folding wooden chair. The room smells of paint. Hanging slightly askew is a clip-framed photo of a startled-looking baby in a woolly romper suit, possibly knitted by Constance. Ben squirms uneasily on my lap. A rich odor sneaks out from his bottom. Naturally I have come without nappies or wipes. I investigate the room marked Toilet and find only a dispenser of green paper towels.
“Hello, Nina.” Lovely’s head pops round the toilet door. Her apricot twinset lends her face a peachy cast. She’s the color of waterproof plaster. “Glad you found us,” she says. “Now, let me ask, do you know anything about modeling?”
“Very little,” I say, tripping after her from the hall to the living room which appears to be the hub of the baby modeling world. Three women talk simultaneously on telephones. Enormous photos dominate the room: a little girl with a side ponytail, curtseying; a smug-looking boy biting fiendishly on a choc-ice.
“Did he?” says the tangerine woman. “It’s not like Nicholas to have an off day.” She replaces the receiver. “Nicholas Horley in the Organica ad. Got hold of an open apple puree tin, sliced the end off his little finger. It’ll never have a fingerprint, apparently.”
Lovely squirms in mock-pain, causing her triple string of pearls to rattle softly.
“Well, they do say never work with children,” I snigger.
“I hope they don’t,” says Lovely. “Our models are very professional.”
“Unlike the parents,” adds the tangerine woman.
“That’s it,” says Lovely, regarding me tersely as if about to grade my piano performance. “You see, what’s going to make Ben a successful model—a star—is not just down to his visual appeal, but you.”
“Me?” I croak. Ben starts to cry. I bounce my knees, gripping him tightly to my stomach.
“It’s all in the parents’ attitude,” Lovely continues. “Ordinary mother turns up for a job with the child in a dirty babygro and runs out of nappies.”
All telephone activity ceases as three pairs of eyes swivel toward me.
“But professional mother pays great attention to her child’s appearance.”
“Of course.”
“And to her own.”
I look at my shoes. They are not the footwear of a professional chaperone. They are park shoes. One toe has worn away, exposing something like cardboard.
Ben has grown tired of bouncing and reaches for the tangle of telephone cords cluttering Lovely’s desk. “I hope you’re not expecting to make a fortune,” she says. “There’s not much money in this, unless you’re one of the very lucky few.”
“We’re just doing it for fun,” I insist.
She flares her nostrils, perhaps to inhale Ben’s decaying nappy. “Modeling should be fun. Pictures only work if the child is happy in the studio environment. But please—” she rolls the pearls between her fingers “—never be late for a job. You can be fifteen minutes early, but never a second late.”
As I step into the suburban street I realize that I have neither booked a taxi to take us home nor dealt with the foul condition of my son. I should be furious with myself or even crying but instead, I picture Ben in that Organica ad, opening his mouth on demand, doing nothing untoward with a discarded tin. Organica, the voiceover would say. Doesn’t your baby deserve the very best?
I start walking, swinging Ben’s car seat like a handbag. A black cab pulls up. “Been at that baby modeling place?” asks the driver as I clamber in. The back of his neck is wrinkled brown, like sausage skin.
“That’s right. Little Lovelies.”
“Thought so. Your baby, I’m sure I’ve seen him before. In that advert where the dad’s cooking dinner and the baby unwinds a kitchen roll and tangles itself up? Something like that?”
I stare at bow-fronted semis. Bulbous, pregnant houses. Family homes with clocks ticking and dust settling quietly. “He looks cute in that ad,” says the driver.
“Thanks,” I say. “He did pretty well. Everyone says he’s a natural.” We turn into the main street where semis give way to ramshackle greengrocers, their cabbages wilting in traffic fumes. Ben gawps at the cab’s nonsmoking notice, shattered by the Lovely experience.
“You couldn’t wish for more than a beautiful baby,” the driver says. “Me and my wife tried for nearly ten years. Went through the embarrassing sample stuff.”
On the pavement a woman in a vast Garfield T-shirt is walloping her son’s behind. She chases him, hand flapping, into a dog grooming shop offering Clipping Flea Rinse Medicated Baths & Photography Of Your Pet By Qualified Professionals.
“We’ve settled for a Chihuahua,” says the driver. “Like a baby really. Up in the night, gets into bed, follows my wife to the toilet.”
On the radio a woman has just won a hundred thousand pounds and screams, saying she can’t believe it. She tells the DJ it will change her life. “We’ll move deeper into Essex,” she says. The DJ laughs patronizingly.
“A very lucky woman,” says the driver.
“I know I am,” I say.
8
Your Postbaby Body
With no plans for the rest of the day I head home and play Jonathan’s message: “Where are you? Thought you’d be in. I wonder where you are. The park, probably. Call me.”
My voice comes out artificially bright. “I needed to get out of the flat,” I tell him. Well, that bit’s true. I’ll add the missing pieces later, but not now, with the cogs of the working world clanking around him. “Anyway,” I say, “did you want me?”
“Wondered if you’d mind if I went out with the work guys?” His voice swooshes up at the end, like a tick. “I’ll be back by ten,” he adds. “Just a couple of drinks.”
“Of course I don’t mind. Is somebody leaving?”
“No, I just feel the need. A breather from the whole thing.”
From what whole thing? From me or the baby or the whole vegetable pureeing thing? Jonathan has never displayed symptoms of cabin fever. I thought he liked it.
“They’ll be on the management course with me,” he adds. “I should get to know them. Bond a bit. Mayb
e you could go out with Eliza another night.”
“You don’t have to ask. Just go.”
The flat is so still and vacant that there’s no question of remaining in it. I prowl the living room, wiping dust from the radiator knob with my thumb. Beth, self-appointed boss of the coffee morning circuit, is always involved in some petty household task when I call: tidying her pin cushion, polishing a light flex, marinating olives like those at the riverside restaurant. She details the task and I hear myself admitting that I am in the process of chipping limescale from the toilet bowl. I’ve started talking breathily, like she does. My old voice has gone. When Beth says she enjoys having her sleep disturbed (“How can I complain when it gives me extra time with Maudie?”) I agree that the 3:00 a.m. blunder to the kitchen is a highlight for me, too. I must stop this, before a rabbit knapsack attaches itself to my back.
I’ve brought Ben to the swimming pool to escape from the radiator knobs. The changing room hums with sharp-elbowed girls talking nonchalantly about boys called Giles and Eddie. “He’s so immature,” groans a slender thing with bruised undereye shadows.
“Yeah, I mean grow up. Get it together. He’s stressing you out,” declares her virtually identical friend.
What do these girls have to stress about? They sit multichoice exams. Their tea is dished up in front of the telly by mums they despise. They can wear hot pants without anyone retching.
“What d’you think of Giles?” asks the bruised shadow one, applying mascara. She stretches her mouth like a fish.
“Gay,” sighs her friend.
I’m staring with mouth lolling open and possibly drool seeping out. I turn away and place Ben facedown in the playpen. He pushes up on his arms, looking around with interest. The trouble with this pool is the fact that, during its upgrade, someone in authority decided to do away with segregated changing rooms and opted for the free and easy concept of a unisex Changing Village. Men roam about, toweling hair, scratching chests, buttoning up their trousers. There are wet buttocks and back hair and ruddy potbellies. Acres of dripping male skin. The challenge here is how to change into my swimsuit without exposing myself to the various men present, or leaving Ben unattended in the playpen.
The girl is covering her undereye shadows with concealer. It seeps from its golden tube onto a brush. A new cosmetic has been invented without my knowledge. “Excuse me,” I say, frightening her, “would you keep an eye on my baby while I get changed?”
“Oh, what a sweetie,” she gushes. “I love babies. Go on, he’ll be fine.”
I dart into the cubicle and strip off my cardigan and T-shirt in one, omitting to undo the cardi’s top button which pings off and rolls under the gap. I kneel on the tiles, forgetting that I am wearing jeans, which are immediately sodden from the knees down. The button lies on the next cubicle floor, within reach. It shouldn’t matter but my soft pink cardigan is the sole garment that has so far escaped baby-related splatterings. Magically its dusky pinkness makes me look a little less dead. This vision of softness gives the instant impression that its wearer is of sound mind and body, has enjoyed eight hours’ uninterrupted sleep and certainly indulges in a wide repertoire of sexual delights, even on a weeknight.
Without that top button, it will never be the same again.
I slide a hand under the cubicle wall. The button has come to rest in a puddle. My fingers form a pincer shape, about to snatch it, when a hefty foot crunches heavily onto my palm.
“Hello?” the foot’s owner says.
“I’m just trying to reach something.”
A pause. “There’s nothing here.”
“There is. A button.”
“I can’t see anything.”
“It’s tiny. Mother of pearl. By your left big toe.”
I peer under the cubicle wall as the foot—enormous with long, knobbly toes flecked with black hairs—is joined by a hand, which delicately extracts the button from the puddle.
Out in the Changing Village the girl with shadows now erased bobs Ben up and down before the mirror. He chirps with delight at each glimpse of his reflection.
A six-foot male in snug-fitting trunks emerges from a cubicle and observes my saggy swimsuit. My breasts droop thinly, like icing bags.
“Here’s your button,” says Ranald.
Does he recognize me? It’s eighteen months since our camping expedition. “Thanks,” I say. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
“I know you from somewhere,” he says carefully.
“Camping,” I remind him. “Your uncle’s place in Devon. We had a bit of a fall-out.”
A tic appears beneath his left eye. “You look different,” he says.
“Yes, I’ve had a baby.”
His face collapses. A sturdy girl in a silver swimsuit with cutaway side panels strides from the showers. “Hi,” she says to my breasts.
“Gabs,” says Ranald, “this is someone I sort of used to know ages back.”
Sharp nipples jut proudly from her costume. Ranald seems to be experiencing respiratory difficulties. “This is Gabrielle,” he pants. “Gabs, this is… Nancy.”
The shop assistant eyes the filthy buggy and accompanying clapped-out mother as we attempt to force entry. Eliza watches with interest as I ram the etched-glass door.
“Can you watch the door?” says the salesgirl. I wonder how it would be to work in such an establishment. Naturally you would have to maintain a high standard of appearance, beginning your skincare routine at 5:30 a.m. But apart from looking stunning in a bored way—and sick around the gills when anyone weighing over seven stone tries to enter your shop—there doesn’t seem to be much to it. “Can I help?” she asks, obviously concluding that I have thundered in by mistake and really want the Co-op.
“I’m just looking.”
Eliza picks over sage-green garments hanging dismally from rails. The clothes are ugly, but smell expensive. “Hi, Cindy,” she says.
“Oh, darling. I didn’t see you. Looking for something special?”
“It’s for my friend. She’s a mother,” Eliza explains unnecessarily, as the buggy dominates the shop like a forklift truck.
“That’s nice,” says Cindy queasily.
“She wants something to make herself feel better. Isn’t that right, Nina?”
Cindy smiles bravely as if she’s about to be given an injection. “Remember I’ve got my discount card,” Eliza hisses. I check the tag on a cobwebby black sweater. “You don’t want that,” she scolds. “You never buy yourself anything decent and you’re not starting with a dowdy black sweater.”
Cindy pretends to straighten a gray silk dress on its hanger.
“You used to look great,” Eliza adds. “There’s no need for leggings just because you’re a mum.”
“I don’t have any leggings,” I say. But it’s too late. Her briskness triggers my tear ducts into action. I examine a cream silk dress edged with antique-looking lace.
“And you don’t want that,” sniffs Eliza. “You’d want to be seriously thin to carry cream. Even I couldn’t get away with it.”
“Oh, you could,” says Cindy. “You’re looking great, really tanned. Been away?”
“Mauritius,” says Eliza. She’s filled me in on her latest trip: the insurmountable task of shooting nine bikinis over a three-day period left little time to sample the delights on offer at the beach resort, although she squeezed in a curious massage involving hot stones being placed on her naked bottom.
“Here, here and here,” she says, snatching an assortment of garments in various shades of sludge.
“I don’t like fawn.”
“It’s not fawn. It’s putty. And you don’t know you don’t like it because you’ve never worn it.” Instantly I see Eliza the Mother: “How can you say you don’t like anchovies? You’ve never tried them.”
“Can’t I have something bright?”
“She’s out of practice,” Eliza informs Cindy. “Called me from a café all panicky, saying she wanted to go shopping b
ut couldn’t manage on her own. Said she couldn’t make decisions. Upset over a button fallen off her chain store cardi.”
Eliza has failed to notice a thin line of wetness spilling down one cheek. I squeeze my eyelids together, trying to suck it back in. She holds a long, narrow charcoal dress against herself. It looks like a funnel from a ship.
Ben opens his eyes and yawns at a rail of drain-water skirts. I make a gulping noise, like a frog. “Are you all right?” asks Eliza. Cindy swipes the cream dress as if she’s trying to remove any skin cells I might have left on it.
“I don’t know. I just feel so stupid.” My lips are shuddering now, tears mingling with snot. I am liquefying in a shop where tights cost more than my pink cardi.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she says, pulling me to her chest. Her sequined top scratches my face. Narrow arms wrap round me. “Can she sit down?” asks Eliza, like I’m an elderly lady having a turn.
“Oh, poor darling,” says Cindy, registering my wet face. She leads me to a dimly lit back room. I am lowered into a brown leather armchair.
The two women peer at me. “Are you depressed?” asks Eliza.
“No, it’s not that.”
“Lots of women get it. They go mad and cry all the time. They throw their babies downstairs.”
“I’m not about to do that.” She’s right, though: as a breed, mothers are particularly unhinged. In no way could my mother be described as normal. During parents’ evenings at my secondary school, I would fidget at home, praying she wouldn’t invite my French teacher’s son round to play with me.
At Promise I interviewed a woman who, eight weeks after giving birth, had taken up with a schoolboy she’d found performing impressive 360-degree flips on his skateboard. He had peered into the pram and admired her baby. Three weeks later she was hanging about outside his school in lilac embroidered corduroys and a strapless satin top. She told me, “I don’t care what people think. I love him, he loves me. The only problem is when his mates come round and polish off all our drink.”
This woman isn’t unusual. Mothers are primed to go off at any moment. They spend decades calmly encouraging small people to finish their fish fingers and say, “Please may I leave the table?” until one day: off they go, without leaving a note or even washing the frying pan.